A Case of Blackmail
by poisonandperfection
Summary: Cain never intended for any of this to happen-the room, the boy, the cigarette case, or his own newfound confusion. Unfortunately, that won't undo the consequences.
1. Incident

**Shoutout to the unstoppable force of storm101 for prodding at my immovable object and getting me to actually a.) write this, b.) post this, and c.) not immediately orphan and neglect it.**

**For better or worse, this series has been a massive influence on me for years, and I can only hope I'm doing it some small justice.**

* * *

_Incident_

* * *

Cain swallowed hard. His ears were buzzing. He'd had too much to drink, and felt that he might shake his head and wake up suddenly in his own bed, as though it couldn't be anything but a perverse dream.

He needed to stand up, to enact his plan and leave. His flimsy excuses to himself had brought him to this point, but there was no way to write off another step in this direction. Continuing to sit there was a cowardly way of making a choice, but he couldn't pretend that it wasn't a choice. He needed to stand and leave before every lie he'd told that evening was revealed to be the truth about him.

"Cain, wasn't it?"

The earl jolted slightly at the hand on his knee.

"You've been sitting there an awfully long time, milord." The other sounded sweetly mocking. "You're allowed to be nervous... But too much thinking and you'll run away. Hm, Lord Cain?"

It didn't feel quite real. He turned his head to see the speaker, trying to dredge up his name from earlier, brief introductions, and the boy was looming over him, in spite of his relative youth and slender build, and either Cain did not want to understand in time to move, or he had drunk more than he thought he had, neither of which were attractive prospects- and what a phrase to use, here and now- because...

Then the youth was kissing him, fully on the lips- Charles, his brain supplied, unhelpfully slow, a valet—and his choice had been made, and he kissed back and tried not to think about how on earth a valet found himself in a cheap hotel room with another man, lest he think of—God, what would he tell Riff in the morning?

* * *

It had started innocently enough, as dinner with an old school friend of Oscar's. Of course Cain had ulterior motives, but they related to the death of Lord Eldridge, not anything like this. In the middle of another inquiry about his companion's amateur cricket team that was headed nowhere, another party had passed them in the restaurant, and caught young Mr. Hart's eye.  
"Excuse me, Cain- Taylor!" The man turned and smiled in apparent delight, but Cain took an instant dislike to him. There was something distinctly middle class about his appearance, and something weaseley and sly about his face. "Are you dining here as well? What a coincidence!"

"I'm afraid I'm only here to pick up a friend." He gestured to, of all things, a waiter moving towards them- a much younger man with a face that would have been pretty if he hadn't looked so smug.

Cain had to admit that he immediately thought something extremely unflattering of this Taylor fellow, and his internal insults deepened suddenly into suspicions when the interloper brushed his fingers along the waiter's waist.

"Taylor." The boy cast Hart and Hargreaves each a considering look that left no real room for doubt in Cain's mind. "These friends of yours coming tonight?"

He wondered if this was the sort of indignant horror that Uncle Neil felt constantly in his presence, and made a halfhearted resolution to apologize.

"Well, Taylor, are we invited?"

A little chill of horror shot down Cain's spine. What on earth was Hart thinking? They hardly knew each other, to begin with, and he was suggesting that they follow dinner with a pleasant evening of sodomy?

"Of course, Aaron! We're having a bit of a dinner party at my house, I'm afraid, and you're already eating, but feel free to drop by for a few drinks, and then we'll be moving over to the club for the evening. If your friend doesn't mind, he's certainly welcome to join us."

He definitely did mind, since he had no intention of spending the evening with male prostitutes, thank you. And Aaron Hart was a friend of Oscar's from college! That made his suspicions about the ex-Gabriel heir much more likely. No bloody wonder Oscar had been disowned, in that case! Cain wondered briefly if their entire amateur cricket team had a more Grecian concept of sportsmanship. Oscar was built like a sportsman, muscular and broad, but Hart was all slender and lean, and thank God he noticed Cain staring and snapped him out of it with a little grin.

"Cain?"

"Ah, yes! Sorry. That sounds lovely." After all, he rationalized, he hadn't gotten a shred of useful information out of Hart yet, and he was attempting to investigate a murder, was he not? It would be ridiculous to let this put him off. Besides, he didn't have to so much as leave the restaurant with the man. The agreement alone would make his companion feel that they were co-conspirators, and make getting information about Lord Eldridge that much easier.

But then, of course, he realized that there was no harm in going to Taylor's little dinner, where he could ply Hart with drinks and extract even more information about Lord Eldridge's private affairs without getting anywhere near their so-called club. The plying with drinks, however, went both ways, and though he suspected that Hart's reasons were slightly nefarious, he couldn't refuse, just as he realized he couldn't make his escape without rousing suspicions. He was a bit tipsy and simply couldn't think of a convincing excuse.

He determined to retire with a boy to a private room, pay him, and simply depart.

His ability to willfully lie to himself was truly astonishing.

* * *

Cain laid very still, smoking one of Charles's cheap cigarettes and wondering what the hell he was supposed to do now. He took a shallow drag and shifted a leg slightly, wishing desperately to be clothed again in more than his shirt but feeling tremendously sore and limp. The rent boy was smirking at him from across the bed, but Cain couldn't quite manage to meet his eyes.

"I'm surprised at you, _Lord_ Cain. It usually goes the other way in these sorts of—"

He forced himself to move, stumbling slightly and wincing as he fumbled for his discarded clothes. He couldn't bear to hear any more of this, to see this insufferable boy for another instant, knowing what he knew, having done what he'd done.

The other only laughed, standing leisurely and putting out his cigarette. "You look like you could use a hand," he mused sweetly, as Cain fumbled with his tie, and plucked the ends out of his grasp to knot a neat four in hand with startling ease. "What? I am a valet, you know."

Cain recoiled slightly from the thought, absurdly disgusted by the idea of this man, naked and smirking and stinking of sex, claiming the same title as Riff. Riff, who had dressed him neatly in a Windsor before he left for dinner. Riff, to whom he would return in the wee hours with a lie on his lips and this man's tie knot hanging around his neck like a noose. It was ridiculous to feel as guilty as he did in that moment about a tie, and yet…

He shook it off and stepped into his trousers, glancing around for his jacket and discovering that the contents of his pockets had spilled across the floor—his cards, a few pence in loose change, and a gold cigarette case.

Charles picked up the case without apology. "Well isn't this a pretty thing?"

Payment, Cain registered suddenly. Was he expected to offer money, or would that be crass? Nothing had been discussed beforehand.

"Are you terribly attached to it? I should like to have a memento—since I was your first, and all."

Cain turned to look for a mirror and hide the sneer that slipped across his face. "Then it's yours." He ran his fingers through his hair to neaten it and added casually, "Though I don't imagine the contents would be much to your taste. If I may?" The cigarette case was handed back over and Cain popped it open, dumping a bundle of little flat vials into his hand, each sloshing with clear liquid.

"Milord has a little habit?" Charles inquired silkily, and Cain smiled back.

"Something like that. Would you like to try?" He unscrewed the lid of a vial and tipped a single drop out onto his fingertip.

"Well, whyever not?"

"Open," the noble ordered, slipping his finger between the rent boy's parted lips and watching him suck it clean without shame. He shrugged into his jacket and bent to tie his shoes, deciding on second thought to simply knot them and tuck the laces inside, for Riff to fix later. When he stood again, Charles was already looking woozy.

"Works quickly," he murmured thickly, and Cain smiled, shoving him gently and letting him fall back across the bed, dead to the world.

He left the cigarette case in the young man's limp hand—an ignominious end for an eighteenth birthday present from his uncle, who, as he had entirely forgotten, had gone to the trouble of engraving _Cain C. Hargreaves_ in neat script on the inside.


	2. Aftermath

**WOW I'M REALLY SORRY IT TOOK ME SO LONG TO UPDATE**

**I have several more chapters written- and have since I posted the first one- but I just mentally wandered off and never posted them like the idiot I clearly am. So here, have a short intermediary scene and then the more reasonable length of third chapter. You might actually get to the part with a _plot! _This is obviously what I get for drunkenly posting- immediate forgetfulness and embarrassment and an incredibly long delay.**

* * *

_Aftermath_

* * *

Riff had waited up for him, Cain was simultaneously pleased and humiliated to discover. It was past midnight when he limped through the door, mostly sober and in need of a very long, very hot shower. He flashed Riff his best confident smirk and tested out the story he'd perfected in the carriage home. "I am sorry it's so late—the long-winded Mr. Hart had less to say than I'd hoped… Fortunately darling Miss Posslewaite felt the need to stop by our table and say hello, and I… well, I saw my escape from more cricket stories, my knight in shining sateen, and I made my escape on her arm. Mr. Hart could hardly begrudge me the desire for her company. She is... most convincing."

Riff Raffit had learned many things from running the Hargreaves house, and telling when Master Cain was lying was not the least of them. He bowed gracefully and smiled faintly, though he did not feel the particular desire to do so. Cain would expect him to be amused by the fictional exploit. He felt, instead, a touch hurt that his lord had lied to him. "Will milord be needing a bath?"

"Oh, yes PLEASE."

Cain lead the way up the stairs, disguising his limp rather poorly, and even without Mr. Hart's connection to the dubious Mr. Gabriel, it combined tellingly with the scent of sex and cheap cologne that clung to the young lord's rumpled clothes. Riff bit his tongue. His master would do as he wished, as always.

Riff adjusted the temperature of the water and let it fill the bath, dropping smoothly down onto one knee to undress his employer, picking loose the knots in his shoelaces and pretending not to notice the pink blush that lit the boy's cheeks. Interesting. Still, it was hardly the first time the ritual of undressing had brought other things to mind for the young aristocrat. Lord Cain was a bit oversexed for a boy his age, not that Riff felt anything about the matter short of gentle concern.

When the servant reached for his tie, Cain pressed forward into his chest with an odd expression- guilt and defiance and something else- but Riff knew this insecurity and slipped a gentle arm around his lord. A sudden warmth bloomed in his chest as his master nuzzled childishly against his shoulder. He was really so very small and fragile, his Master Cain, warm and delicate and trusting and broken. "Sir..." he offered softly, wondering if this vulnerability was related to the boy's evening's entertainment. "Forgive me, but the bath will overflow if I don't tend to it."

Cain seemed to return to himself for the rest of the evening, and was put to bed without fuss. In fact, Riff had almost convinced himself to forget his own conclusions by the time the incident resurfaced.


	3. Repercussions

**In which I am revealed to possess -20 creativity. I have made up exactly one name thus far, and all the rest are from Victorian literature and, awkwardly enough, the criminal trials of Oscar Wilde. Except for Miss Posslewaite, who may or may not be mentioned in a song on the concept album of the Jekyll and Hyde musical. I think that pretty much sums me up as a human being, really- so if you're into Victorian lit, enjoy playing spot-the-butler here!**

* * *

_Repercussions_

* * *

Lord Cain was quite busy enough with the social calendar of the season to spare Riff's company for hours at a time, and, on this Tuesday he had finally caught up on the household accounts, the hiring of a new maid, and the cataloguing of his employer's poison collection. Over the weekend, he had also successfully tailed an exhaustively busy gentleman who had turned out to be entirely innocent, and so, when he crossed off the last item on his list of duties for the day, he took one look at the clock—6:20, with Master Cain not due home until ten at the very earliest—and caught a cab for the Ganymede Club.

The butler spent the vast majority of his time with his employer and running the household at a precariously high speed, but that certainly was not to say that he had no friends or acquaintances of his own station. He had been an occasional member of the London valet club for nigh on three years and found the company of his fellows largely agreeable, though he gravitated more towards the older gentlemen who were entirely devoted to a single family. On this evening, he was pleased to see Lane scratching irritably in the club's record book, his perpetually sour expression marred by faint flickers of fondness. At the table near the door, Jean Passepartout and Henry Jackson were speaking spiritedly over brandy—Riff caught a fragment about India and smiled to himself. There was a call of "Ho, Raffit!" from across the room, and Poole waved him over with a smile.

"Poole, Victor." He smiled back, and nodded across the table as well, "Whist, I think? God help us all if you're up against these two." The gentlemen across the table smiled in serene confidence, then one uprooted himself from his chair with a heavy sigh.

"I believe I'll take that as a sign that I should be on my way."

"I thought Mr. Worthing was attending the Duchess of Harley's dinner, with Master Cain?" Riff inquired, hoping that the man wasn't leaving purely to allow him into their game.

"Unfortunately, I am doomed to make the rounds of Master Worthing's creditors tonight. Let us pray that they will be put off with as few expenditures as possible."

Riff smiled at that, and, when the man's whist partner gestured to the abandoned seat, took it without hesitation. "How far in the lead are we, ah, Reginald? I doubt I'll be as useful as I'd like, but I can try."

His partner looked mildly alarmed. "In the name of our lord, anything but Reginald. Only angry mothers and maiden aunts may render 'Reginald' aloud with proper inflection."

* * *

They were doing quite well against the exasperated but amused duo of Poole and Victor when the door to the club opened again and admitted a small pack of more youthful valets, who seemed to be in high spirits, or perhaps had been consuming high spirits, as the case may be. Riff frowned slightly at the noise they were making, feeling a bit guilty for it even as he did so. Surely he didn't begrudge them an evening of relaxation, to unwind from the stress of their work. He glanced around his table and saw that Victor was watching them with a deep scowl etched across his brow.

"Is something the matter?" he inquired, playing a trump Jack.

"Only that I believe our club may be doomed to decline and disgrace, at this rate. Those young fools have no respect for the weight of their responsibilities, and that Charles Parker they vouched for, the blond boy with them now? We're to vote on his membership next week, and I assure you that if he is accepted I will quit this place the very next day."

Riff was surprised by his vehemence, to say the least. Victor had tolerated worse behavior from his employer than even Lord Cain could provide.

Poole asked the question. "What makes you say a thing like that? I don't doubt for a second that you have good reason, but I think we ought to know if we're putting him to a vote."

Victor frowned stiffly. "He's an acquaintance of Mr. Gray's. Valeting fails to cover the expenses of his lifestyle, if you understand me. He has found other venues of income."

The group turned with newfound disapproval back the young men, who were settling into a booth with loud exclamations of cheer. The aforementioned blond boy was already halfway to their table. "Mr. Raffit! What are you doing sitting with those stuffed old corpses? You're barely older than me!"

Riff stiffened in discomfort but tried pleasantry. "I'm afraid that I have the interests of a much older man- I'm quite content to be as sedentary as parliament."

"No, come have a drink with us, I insist! Just a drink? I shan't leave until you do."

Riff shot his companions a tight, uncomfortable smile. "Then, gentlemen," he offered softly, "Forgive me." It would be beyond rude to stay and expose them further to this degenerate. He stood to follow, and the boy produced a gold cigarette case from his coat, slipping one out and placing it between his full lips.

"Do you smoke, Mr Raffit?" he inquired, proffering the case.

"No, thank you, I-" Across the inside, engraved in neat script, was Cain C. Hargreaves. Riff seized his wrist instinctively, staring down at the case, then back up at the current owner. "Where did you get this?" he demanded, voice low and tone vicious. He realized the he was squeezing the boy's wrist painfully tightly and released it.

The young man laughed, snapping it shut and rubbing at his wrist. He lead the other to an unoccupied booth before responding, and Riff followed wordlessly, hands clenched into nervous fists.

"If you must know," the boy offered at last, slithering into his seat, "It was a gift."

"Why would Master Cain give you his engraved cigarette case? I'm quite certain the two of you have never met."

The young man pouted with faux ingenuity. "I am quite sure we have. Though I suppose he wouldn't have told you about that." Charles licked his lips. "It was a private transaction."

Riff remembered the vials in Lord Cain's inner coat pockets on the night of his dinner with Aaron Hart- the vials that he had kept in the cigarette case.

He felt guilty for even making the connection. To ever even suspect that Cain would- And with this repulsive boy? And yet- "Why did you want to speak with me?"

"I was hoping we could come to an agreement, Mr. Raffit. Riffael."

"Riff. An agreement about what?"

Charles smiled, though it looked almost like a sneer. "Well you see, I'm a bit short on money at the moment. It occurred to me to pawn this," he gestured with the case, "Loath as I would be to part with it, of course. But then, you see, I had a bit of a revelation. Someone like me, pawning a private little thing like this, with the lord Earl's name in it, you know... That's a recipe for a scandal, maybe even charges. I shouldn't like to make any trouble for anyone, so I came to you first."

Riff had gone utterly still, face expressionless, tone flat. "Blackmail."

"That's an ugly word, Riff."

"So is prostitution."

"And so is sodomy. Are we going to talk, or should I go?"

There was a moment of hesitation. To give in, to acknowledge his power and be trapped into this situation, was unthinkable. The alternative was the disgrace of Lord Cain. "How much do you need?"

"See, I knew you'd understand my position. I'm really only trying to do what's best for all of us... I'm in desperate need of ten pounds, and that's no small amount."

Riff nodded stiffly. "Where am I to send it?"


End file.
